How Americans Caught Gold Fever Again

Soaring gold prices, viral panning influencers, gold-rush shows on Discovery TV, and Trump’s gold obsession have ignited a craze for prospecting not seen since the forty-niners headed West. Jennifer Wilson reports.

Programme / Environment and Society in East-Central Europe Conference

Programme - Environment and Society in East-Central Europe Conference - Dare to Explore. The University of Ostrava is a young and rising university, ranked well among central European Universities. We offer Quality, Affordability and Hospitality in our English taught Bachelors, Masters and Doctoral degrees.

Colonisation and Russia’s “Green” Civilising Mission in the Far East

Presenter: Mark Sokolsky (Royal Military College of Canada) Discussant: Maria Pirogovskaya (LMU Munich) Organizer and moderator: Anna Mazanik (Max Weber Network Eastern Europe) May 20, 16:00 CET Abstract: Many environmental transformations of the modern and early modern periods have been deeply connected to imperial expansion and colonialism. At the same time, nature-protection has also, in many contexts, been intertwined with imperial and state power. In this talk, Mark Sokolsky will discuss the intersections of empire and conservationism in the Russian Far Eastern Maritime Territory (Primorskii krai, or Primor’e) during the late tsarist and early Soviet eras. Far from evincing a “conquest of nature” mentality, Sokolsky argues, tsarist-era officials, naturalists, and other observers demonstrated remarkable concern for the region’s environment(s) from an early stage. Their anxiety stemmed in part from their belief that (unwanted) ecological changes were a result of backwardness and barbarism on the part of migrants from elsewhere in Russia, and, especially, those from China, Korea, and Japan. Conversely, tsarist elites tended to associate environmental stewardship with (European) civilisation and believed it was the empire’s responsibility to bring rational, civilised nature-use to the region. This “green” civilising mission was remarkably consistent during the late tsarist era and continued, with some modification, into the early Soviet period. Mark Sokolsky is a specialist in Russian and global environmental history. He has a PhD from Ohio State University with a dissertation on the environmental history of the Far East and now works at the Royal Military College of Canada. Maria Pirogovskaya is a researcher at LMU Munich and a PI in the DFG-funded research project "Socialist Panaceas" that studies medical heterodoxies in the long Soviet era, with a specific focus on Eastern Siberia. Please register to get the Zoom-link. The link will be sent on the day of the event. If you have not received the link one our before the event, please contact Anna Mazanik directly at [email protected]

Announcements – International Commission on the History of Meteorology

When Fertilizer Becomes Geopolitics: History’s Lessons for Nitrogen Governance — International Nitrogen Network

With the volatility around the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, nitrogen fertilizer has entered  mainstream news and become a concern beyond its traditional audience in the industrial and agricultural communities. However, for those who follow nitrogen issues, this is yet another example of